Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Oil on masonite. 1993.
Signature: “Sorry, Chagall!” I MÄETAMM ’93

Marko Mäetamm (b. 1965), who arrived on the Estonian art scene as a colorful comet in the early 1990s, is celebrating a milestone birthday this year. This painting is a good way to celebrate this event because in addition to the imposing floral salute in the center, the work is remarkable in other ways as well.

By the time this work was created, Mäetamm had largely relied on the shoulders of various art giants such as Chagall, Matisse, Picasso, etc. in his work, but he had also cultivated neo- and retro-pop, created bridges with the chic Beatles and hippie aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s as well as flirted with the modern era. Here, however, we see a decision to break free from role models. Moreover, Mäetamm, who graduated from the University of Arts in 1992, had been enlightened one beautiful August evening by subjective formalism – his own new artistic method, his own personal -ism! This method allowed him to increase his productivity many times over and later even formalize the effective methodology into a Master of Arts thesis. And it is in the context of this theory that we can also view and evaluate this work.

For Mäetamm, subjective formalism meant a system for constructing a work of art and certain rules – pure tones, large generalizations, everyday themes, the exact correspondence of the title to the image, a simple and understandable way of depicting. And in this work we see pure colors – yellow, red, black and white; large generalizations – hippie and flower figures; social interaction, and the title itself explains something – namely Chagall’s flying figures floating away from the work. So, this work complies with the rules and also refers to the artist’s emancipation, or liberation from great role models. So, “Sorry, Chagall”!

Text: Regina Mets